Animal Nature Quotes

Secondly, man sins against nature when he goes against his generic nature, that is to say, his animal nature. Now, it is evident that, in accord with natural order, the union of the sexes among animals is ordered towards conception. From this it follows that every sexual intercourse that cannot lead to conception is opposed to man's animal nature.

We're just animals, creatures smart enough and unlucky enough to have figured out we're alive, and we're going to die without ever knowing any purpose. We can pretend all we want and we can wish all we want, but that basic existential fact remains—we can't know.

Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.

You cannot expect everything even from the friendliest cat. It is still a cat.

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

Man like every other animal is by nature indolent. If nothing spurs him on, then he will hardly think, and will behave from habit like an automaton.

Homo sapiens does its best to forget the fact, but it is an animal.

You can draw the character out of pets, and you can make them your friends, but they are animals, and they have to be allowed to live the lives of animals.

Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do.We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. [. . .] The animals need only be and do.We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom.

Without the errors which lie in the assumption of morality, man would have remained an animal.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

History proves to us that the state, government, religion, church, all public institutions, are the only means by which wild and animal man obtains his small share of reason and justice.

Way down deep, we're all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.

Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient.

You call to a dog and a dog will break its neck to get to you. Dogs just want to please. Call to a cat and its attitude is, 'What's in it for me?'

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

I had a very famous trainer tell me once, 'You can usually train a wild animal but never tame a wild animal, ever.' They are always going to be wild, no matter what anybody says.

A human being is a naturally political [animal].

The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.

Whenever man forgets that man is an animal, the result is always to make him less humane.

I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.

How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.

... I doubt the capacity of the human animal for being dignified in ceremony.

The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger.

What is human behavior, except trying to prove that we're not animals?